1 Richard Gregg and the Power of Nonviolence: The Power of Nonviolence as the unifying animacy of life James Tully J Glenn and Ursula Gray Memorial Lecture Department of Philosophy Colorado College March 1 2016 Introduction I would like to thank Professor Dennis McEnnerney and the Department of Philosophy for inviting me to give the J Glenn and Ursula Gray Memorial Lecture this year. It is a great honour but also a humbling one as I look over the distinguished philosophers who have given this famous lecture in the past. I would also like to thank the students in the Junior Seminar for studying my work this term. It has been a great pleasure to meet with them over the last two days. My objective in this lecture is just to give an introduction to the amazing life and work of Richard Bartlett Gregg, 1885-1974, who, as you know, was born here in Colorado Springs and attended Cutler Academy before moving on the Harvard University. Before I do so, I would like to explain briefly how I came to be interested in Richard Gregg and his classic study of The Power of Nonviolence. Since 2002 I have been working on a relational way of thinking about freedom that I call ‘civic freedom’. I came to the hypothesis that if there is a form of intersubjective freedom in relationships of interdependency with human and non-human living beings, then it would have to be nonviolent. This lead to studying and lecturing on Gandhi and the history of nonviolence. One day in Powell’s bookstore in Portland Oregon I happened to find an edition of Gregg’s The Power of Nonviolence, 1959, with its famous forward by Martin Luther King Jr. I added it to my seminar and began to study it and Gregg’s other writings in the context of his relationship to Gandhi and the nonviolent movements in North America; and to lecture on it here and there over the last few years. At the same time, Quentin Skinner decided to re-open the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought series – the ‘blue series’ - and publish classic texts that had been missed the first time round, and also to publish texts from non-Western traditions. I suggested that I would like to edit and write a lengthy introduction to Gregg’s The Power of Nonviolence. Quentin Skinner
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Richard Gregg and the Power of Nonviolence:
The Power of Nonviolence as the unifying animacy of life
James Tully
J Glenn and Ursula Gray Memorial Lecture
Department of Philosophy
Colorado College March 1 2016
Introduction
I would like to thank Professor Dennis McEnnerney and the Department of Philosophy for inviting
me to give the J Glenn and Ursula Gray Memorial Lecture this year. It is a great honour but also a
humbling one as I look over the distinguished philosophers who have given this famous lecture in
the past. I would also like to thank the students in the Junior Seminar for studying my work this
term. It has been a great pleasure to meet with them over the last two days.
My objective in this lecture is just to give an introduction to the amazing life and work of
Richard Bartlett Gregg, 1885-1974, who, as you know, was born here in Colorado Springs and
attended Cutler Academy before moving on the Harvard University. Before I do so, I would like
to explain briefly how I came to be interested in Richard Gregg and his classic study of The Power
of Nonviolence.
Since 2002 I have been working on a relational way of thinking about freedom that I call
‘civic freedom’. I came to the hypothesis that if there is a form of intersubjective freedom in
relationships of interdependency with human and non-human living beings, then it would have to
be nonviolent. This lead to studying and lecturing on Gandhi and the history of nonviolence. One
day in Powell’s bookstore in Portland Oregon I happened to find an edition of Gregg’s The Power
of Nonviolence, 1959, with its famous forward by Martin Luther King Jr. I added it to my seminar
and began to study it and Gregg’s other writings in the context of his relationship to Gandhi and
the nonviolent movements in North America; and to lecture on it here and there over the last few
years.
At the same time, Quentin Skinner decided to re-open the Cambridge Texts in the History
of Political Thought series – the ‘blue series’ - and publish classic texts that had been missed the
first time round, and also to publish texts from non-Western traditions. I suggested that I would
like to edit and write a lengthy introduction to Gregg’s The Power of Nonviolence. Quentin Skinner
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agreed and so did two enthusiastic anonymous reviewers. Cambridge received permission from
the Fellowship of Reconciliation, who holds the copyright to the second revised edition (1959),
and I began to work on it.
So, when Professor McEnnerney invited me to give a lecture at Colorado College, in
Gregg’s birthplace, the invitation was both serendipitous and irresistible.
Outline
My lecture is organised in the following way. (1) I begin with a brief survey of Gregg’s life and
work.
(2) I will then suggest that we can see from this survey the distinctive way that Gregg
himself came to question and lose faith in violence and relationships of power-over, which he calls
domination, and to become aware of and gradually persuaded by nonviolence and relationships of
power-with, which he calls integration. This slow ‘conversion experience’ from violence to
nonviolence that Gregg went through in America and India helps us to see how he tries to explain
how the power of nonviolence can not only convert violent individual and group actors to
nonviolence; but how nonviolent resistance also has the capacity to transform the predominantly
violent and dominative civilization of the West into a predominantly nonviolent and non-
dominative civilization.
(3) I will then sketch in quite general terms the tripartite vision that Gregg develops and
refines over his lifetime. The three parts of the vision are of: violent and dominative or power-over
social systems; nonviolent and power-with social systems; and, third, the practices of nonviolence
that have the capacity to move violent actors and systems to resolve their disputes by means of
nonviolence and integration, and thus replace war and violence with nonviolent conflict resolution.
This general vision is called Gregg’s ‘counter-modernity’.
(4) Next, I will present a brief summary of his book, The Power of Nonviolence. In the final
section of the lecture I will examine one feature of his broad vision. This is his famous
phenomenological description of how the power of nonviolent resistance can actually transform
violent struggles into nonviolent contestation and cooperation – by what Gregg calls ‘moral jiu-
jitsu’.
1. Richard Gregg 1885-1974: Life and Works
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1885 born Colorado Springs; his father was a congregational minister; he attended Cutler
Academy
1903 entered Harvard University in science, like father and 3 brothers
1907 graduated and tutored in Massachusetts for one year
1908 entered Harvard Law School
1911 Graduated with LLB, tour of Europe, entered a Boston law firm
1912 Worked for Robert Valentine, Director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington
1915 Robert Valentine opened office in Chicago, Gregg joined and worked on labour-
management disputes
1917 US enters WW1, Gregg just over draft age 32
1920s lawyer for railway union,
1922 400,000 go on strike, violent and capital victorious over labour
1924 Runs across Gandhi’s writings in a bookstore in Chicago, interested in his techniques to
counter violence and resolve disputes
1925 Three years in India with Gandhi in Ashram, teaching, spinning, learning: see My
Memories of Gandhi
1928 publishes first two books: A Preparation for Science, and Economics of Khaddar
1928 returns to US, marries
1929 The Psychology and Strategy of Gandhi’s Nonviolent Resistance, (includes Jiu-Jitsu),
edited by Barker in Garland Series (1st book on NV)
1930 Returned with wife to India, met Gandhi again, observed the Salt march
1930 Gandhi’s Satyagraha or Non-violent Resistance (2nd book on nonviolence)
1931 Sends Gandhi’s Satyagraha and Economics of Khaddar to WEB Du Bois
1931 Gandhism and Socialism 1931 and republished as Gandhism versus Socialism 1932
1934 The Power of Nonviolence (3rd book on NV) presented to Gandhi on his birthday
1935 The Power of Nonviolence published in US, becomes the ‘bible of nonviolence’ from 1935
to the 1960s.
1935-36 Acting Director, Pendle Hill, Wallingford Pennsylvania – a Quaker retreat
1936 The Value of Voluntary Simplicity (his famous vision of sustainable living)
1937 Training for Peace, introduction by Aldous Huxley (see Means and Ends)
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1938 Moves to Putney Commons, in Putney Vermont (six families) his first sustainable living
community
1939 A Pacifist Program in Time of War
1942 CORE uses PNV against racial discrimination; Bayard Rufus
1943 WEB Du Bois & Ralph Templin of Harlem Ashram debate violence and nonviolence
Crisis
1944 Publishes second edition of Power of Nonviolence, introduction by Rufus Jones, Quaker
philosopher at Haverford. Published by Fellowship of Reconciliation, which also published
many of his articles in their journal, Fellowship
1948 Moves to organic farming with Helen and Scott Nearing near Jamaica, Vermont, 65 acres,
builds a house with Nearings; and practices nonviolent sustainable living, human scale
technology, cyclical economics, ecoliteracy, and solar power (Nearings move to Maine in
the 1950s)
1950s Glen Smiley distributes PNV to Black Colleges, MLK’s ‘Pilgrimage to NV’ uses Gregg’s
terms in the last section
1952 Which Way Lies Hope: an examination of capitalism, communism, socialism and Gandhi’s
programme (that is, his alternative sustainable modernity)
1953 The Structure of Nonviolent Society, short article: nonviolent resistance leaves people
“hanging in mid-air” unless it is based in ethics, sustainable communities & participatory
democracy (swadeshi and swaraj)
1955 Sends copy of PNV to MLK (1944)
1956 A Compass for Civilization (Boston)
1958 A Philosophy of Indian Economic Development, (sustainable economics) sends to MLK
1959 Power of Nonviolence, 2nd revised edition, Forward by MLK, reprint 1960
1960 SNCC uses Power of Nonviolence
1962 An Idea Whose Time Has Come, short article
1960s The Best Solver of Conflicts and Satyagraha as a Mirror, two short articles in Gandhi: His
relevance for our times, and he continues to lecture
1966 First Schocken edition of Power of Nonviolence
1974 Dies of neurological disease
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2 Gregg’s journey from violence to nonviolence
In a short unpublished essay, entitled My Memories of Gandhi, Gregg reflects on his path from
violence and capitalism to nonviolence and Gandhian economics. I think we can see this path in
the brief outline of his life and works I have just given. And I think that we can see the same
pattern worked out in his general vision that I will explore in the following section.
When Gregg first travelled to India with his brother in 1911 he found India to be
uninteresting and backward relative to the West. Then, his years as a labour lawyer during the
railway strikes raised doubts and questions about both the power of capital over labour and of the
use of violence, or the background threat of violence, to resolve disputes. These doubts called into
question his unreflective faith in Western civilization. When he came across Gandhi’s writings in
a Chicago bookshop he was introduced to an alternative form of ethics, self-government, economic
organisation and conflict resolution. All are manifestations of the animating power of nonviolence.
And so he went to India and moved into Gandhi’s ashram in 1925.
Here he participated in Gandhi’s nonviolent way of life for three years. He wore Indian
clothes, practised the ethics of karmayoga meditation, engaged in self-sustaining, village-based
agriculture and hand spinning, nonviolent relationships with humans and the environment
(Swadeshi), voluntary simplicity, and local participatory self-government (Swaraj), all oriented to
the well-being of all members (human and non-human) (Sarvodaya). He underwent a radical self-
transformation.1
In this context, Gandhi asked him to write his first of many books on local, self-sustaining
communities based on cyclical economics; their relation to the participants’ material and moral
needs; and to the sustainability of the ecosystems they inhabit. At the same time he wrote the
preliminary studies of how nonviolent conflict resolution works in practice to transform violent
adversaries into nonviolent partners in a new form of dispute resolution.
When he returned to the United States, he not only continued to write about a mode of
economic organisation based on nonviolent relationships with each other and the living earth and
on nonviolent conflict resolution. But, crucially, he also continued to ground himself in the
nonviolent practices he was writing about. He moved to Vermont and self-sustaining communities
1 He described this self-transformation in terms very similar to the way Franz Boas described the self-transformation of the participatory anthropologist.
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of practice with Scott and Helen Nearing and he wrote his classic text, The Value of Voluntary
Simplicity, as well as his later economic works. And, he continued to lecture and train people in
the practices of nonviolent resistance.
Thus, as he always emphasised, nonviolence is grounded in ethical self-change, and self-
change is grounded in practice. The whole ‘other world’ or civilization of nonviolence and its
possibilities are disclosed to us only through freeing oneself from the predominant system and
beginning to practice a nonviolent ethos and participate in the subaltern communities in all areas
of life – what Gandhi called ‘experiments in truth’. And, as he and Gandhi emphasize, the
transformation does not happen immediately, but, rather, the light dawns slowly over the whole,
consisting of both practice and self-awareness of the essential unity of all forms of life.
Gregg knew about this relationship between being and knowing from William James and
Aldous Huxley, as well as from his own religious background, but he also knew about it from his
own lived experience. And this transformation experience provided a basis for all his writings, to
which I now turn.
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3 Gregg’s Vision of the Power of Violence and Nonviolence
Now, I would like to sketch out Gregg’s vision of the power of violence and nonviolence in broad
strokes. There are two reasons for this. The first reason is that I think the broad vision of violence
and nonviolence follows from his own lived experience as I have just summarised. The second
reason is that when most people think of nonviolence they think of episodic techniques of
nonviolent resistance (or direct action) to strike, boycott, non-cooperate, protest, and so on, to
overthrow an unjust power-holder, to change a law, to force opponents to the negotiating table,
and so on. These are certainly aspects of nonviolent resistance for Gandhi and Gregg. But, they
are just manifestations of a much larger ground or permaculture of nonviolent power relations that
provide the basis and animacy of these techniques.
That is to say, since the rise of technique-based nonviolent resistance with Gene Sharp and
others since the 1970s, people tend to see the ‘trees’ (episodic nonviolent actions) and overlook
the ‘forest’ (the nonviolent ways of being in the world with others in all our activities that is the
ground of these nonviolent actions in so far as they are ‘effective’ in the Gandhi-Gregg sense of
‘transformative’. So, I want to take one step back from the trees – the isolated incidents of
nonviolent action – and sketch the forest – the more basic permaculture of nonviolent relationships
out of which nonviolent direct action is a growth or manifestation. (This ‘trees and forest’ analogy
is used by Gregg).
3.1 Two modes of power: nonviolence and power-with and violence and power-over
For Gandhi and Gregg, there are two very general modes of power: the power of violence
and domination (power-over [or ruler-ruled]) and the power of nonviolence and spontaneous
cooperation (power-with [or participatory democracy]). In modern industrial and post-industrial
societies, we are entangled in both modes of power in their varieties of concrete forms. However,
relations of violent and dominative power tend to be paramount and these are the ones that we tend
to foreground and to take as the model of all forms of power (as Arendt argued in On Violence).
According to Gandhi and Gregg, Western imperialism and colonialism spread their distinctive
forms of violence and domination around the world. They triggered the increase of violent forms
of power in the colonized world in counter-resistance and revolutions of decolonization; and these
in turn have boomerang effects on the imperial powers.
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But, if we focus exclusively on these forms of human relationships, we overlook another
mode of power that exists within all societies and which sustains life on earth. This is the power
of nonviolence and spontaneous cooperation. In the long run, these nonviolent interdependent,
symbiotic relationships of mutual aid and conflict resolution are actually the major factor in human
and non-human evolution. If this were not the case, as both Gandhi and Gregg roundly suggest,
‘the human race would long ago ceased to exist.’ There is, Gregg claims, ‘sound biological,
psychological and historical evidence for this belief.’ (PNV 71)
3.2 Nonviolence
So, let’s begin with the power of nonviolence. This is the power that runs through and
unites all forms of life. It ‘animates’ and ‘sustains’ life. It is called by various names: ahimsa
techniques and strategies of interaction he sets out in The Power of Nonviolence you will be ‘left
hanging in the air’. That is, it overlooks the ground of a nonviolent way of life that gives nonviolent
resistance campaigns their strength and sustainability. He calls this foundation ‘another
civilization’ in the making, and more important than the campaigns.
3.3 Violence
Let us now turn to Gregg’s view of the power of violence, domination and exploitation. Just
as the power of nonviolent conflict resolution is the manifestation of the whole nonviolent way of
life in which it is grounded; so also the solving of conflicts by reciprocal violence and the
imposition of power-over the defeated party is the manifestation of the violent way of life in which
it is grounded. This is a way of life that is founded in violence and the coercive imposition of
power-over nature and human nature relationships (command-obedience, ruler-ruled, and
hegemon-subaltern relationships) and the resolution of disputes by coercion in the last instance.
Resistance to injustices in this form of social system tend in response to take the mirror-image
form of violent revolution organised in command-obedience relationships, and thus reproduce its
basic form in the successor regime. This is Gandhi’s famous argument in Hind Swaraj (1909) and
Gregg’s in Gandhism versus Socialism (1932) and later texts. Gregg’s analysis of this mode of
power, as power-over, is indebted to D.W. Harding, The Impulse to Dominate, 1941, and Elton
Mayo’s empirical studies of work relations in, The Social and Political Problems of Industrial
Civilization, 1945.
As Gregg argues in Which Way Lies Hope? (1956), this is the paramount mode of power in
centralised state capitalism, socialism, and communism. It is also the basic structure of
imperialism, racism, and relations of inequality more generally. If it is not transformed, he argues
in his writings of the 1950s and 1960s, it will lead to ever more destructive wars and violent
revolutions, the plunder of the resources of the planet, and the self-destruction of the human
species. His most detailed treatment of resource depletion, soil erosion, population pressure, and
deepening inequality between the global north and south is in his A Philosophy of Indian Economic
Development, 1958. In all these books, Gregg presents Gandhian, community-based ethics,
economics, technology, and nonviolent local, participatory self-government as the sustainable
alternative for the future. When he sent WEB Dubois a copy of The Power of Nonviolence in 1940
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he also sent him his early work on economics. And he sent A Philosophy of Indian Economic
Development to Martin Luther King along with The Power of Nonviolence.
Note that these works were all written before the Club of Rome, Limits to Growth (1970),
Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle, 1971, and Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth (1980).
Moreover, his alternative, Gandhian economics and ecology, anticipates Fritz Schumacher’s Small
is Beautiful, (1971), and the turn to sustainable communities that are designed in accordance with
the way that “life sustains life” in ecosystems and the Gaia system as a whole. In many respects,
Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac, 1949, is a forerunner to Gregg’s views on ethics,
economics and ecology.
3.4 Contrasting assumptions
Gregg argues that violent and nonviolent social systems are based on contrasting
assumptions. The power of nonviolence is based on the assumption of a spiritual or animating
unity of life in relationships of interdependency and mutual aid that is more fundamental than our
differences. Spontaneous nonviolent cooperation is seen as prior to competition; trust is prior to
distrust and love to hate. These qualities exist in greater or less strength in every person and can
be developed by self-training and working together. (PNV 49, 55) These are all aspects of the
power of nonviolence.
In contrast, the basic assumptions of the power of violence is that humans are separate or
independent beings (autonomous). As a result distrust is prior to trust, and competition and
aggression are prior to cooperation and peace. The coercive imposition of power-over relationships
(domination) is necessary to establish order (civilization) and cooperation. Coercively constrained
competition is the driver of human development. (PNV 131-4)
In addition, these two ways of life have diametrically opposed assumptions about the relation
between means and ends. The power of nonviolence rests on the assumption that the means
prefigure and give rise to the ends, as the seed to the flower. It follows that the only way to a
nonviolent relationship and world is by nonviolent means in each step we take. (PNV 174) Thus
all effective change towards peace and justice begins with ethics as ethos – with being nonviolent
in everything one says and does – whether in our everyday life and the technological means we
use, and in confronting a violent adversary (PNV 147). This is probably the most fundamental and
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best known feature of Gandhi-Gregg nonviolence ever since it was analyzed by Joan Bondurant
and HJN Horsburgh in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as by Karuna Mantena more recently.
Moreover, as a person begins to act and interact nonviolently with others, they not only free
themselves from the violent and dominative ways of acting and interacting. They begin to connect
with and be supported and moved by the power of nonviolence that animates all life. He likens
this to learning to swim - where the learner gradually learns that the water can support and sustain
his or her efforts (PNV 143-4)
On this constitutive view of means and ends, violence and domination do not lead to justice
and peace, but to counter-violence and counter-domination. Violent victory over an opponent
suppresses the conflict but does not resolve it, feeding resentment and further conflict.
The objective of nonviolent resistance, therefore, is not victory over an opponent, voluntary
submission or even compromise. Rather the aim is to transform the violent adversary and the
relationship with them into a nonviolent partner in a nonviolent relationship of exercising power
together. Gregg explains in detail how this is possible in the central chapters of all editions of The
Power of Nonviolence. (PNV CH 2-4) This radical kind of transformation is possible because the
power of nonviolent ‘persuasion’ is more powerful than ‘force’.
The power of violence, in contrast, rests on the assumption that means are contingently
related to ends. Vicious or immoral means can lead to virtuous or moral ends War, violence and
domination are the means to peace, democracy and justice. This is the basic assumption of modern
civilization according to Gandhi and Gregg (as well as Arendt), advanced by Hobbes, Kant, Hegel,
Marx, Mill, Darwin, Freud, Fanon and the theory and practice of development, modernization and
conflict resolution today. Gandhi and Gregg were among the first to call it into question; followed
by Einstein, Huxley, King, Camus, Arendt, and nonviolent social scientists and millions of anti-
war and nonviolent activists today. Yet, the assumption persists in theory and practice.
William James was a supporter of nonviolence, but he argued that the nonviolent movement
had to persuade people that nonviolence could provide Americans with a ‘moral equivalent of
war’. In the interwar years. Walter Lippmann argued that they also had to persuade people that
nonviolence provides a ‘political equivalent of war’, and thus could replace war and violence as
the means of resolving conflicts. It is not too much to say that the main purpose of Gregg in The
Power of Nonviolence was to do exactly this. He lays out his analysis of the power of nonviolence
and then devotes an entire chapter to responding to James and Lippmann.
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3.5 Gregg’s Two Tasks
If this brief overview of Gregg’s vision of the power of nonviolence and violence is
reasonably accurate, then it follows that Gregg had two main tasks. The first, as we have seen, is
to show how nonviolent resistance can transform violent adversaries and resolve conflicts, and
thereby gradually replace war and domination. This is the main task of The Power of Nonviolence.
The second task is to show that the transformative power of nonviolent conflict resolution only
works if it is grounded in the broader nonviolent, everyday life of its practitioners – of ethics,
training, community-based participatory democracy, economic self-reliance and ecoliteracy. It is
this self-sustaining nonviolent alternative-modernity that provides the basis for the dramatic
campaigns of nonviolent resistance and for the gradual, intergenerational transformation of violent
social systems by means of what he calls ‘persuasion’.
It is important to realize that the long chapter on Persuasion only appeared in the 1944
edition. The earlier versions did not even mention it. I think he initially assumed with Gandhi that
practitioners could learn nonviolent techniques relatively quickly and that nonviolent direct action
would work relatively quickly to convert opponents and bystanders. Both assumptions turned out
to be false in practice. This led many to believe that nonviolence itself was falsified in practice.
‘Forget Gandhi’, as David Dallinger put it. This led many people either to a return to violence or
to take nonviolence as simply an amoral episodic technique to act up, protest or overthrow and
replace unjust rulers by types of noncooperation. From the Gandhi-Gregg perspective, this type of
nonviolence is amoral and ineffective; at best only replacing the power-holders in structures of
domination and exploitation. Thus, from 1944 on, against this current, Gregg had to show that
Gandhian nonviolence can be genuinely transformative, but only if it is grounded in the nonviolent
ways of life he sets out in the new training chapters; and only if we take the longer view of
cumulative change and systemic transformation he sets out in the 1944 and 1959 editions.
4. The Power of Nonviolence: an outline
With this general vision in mind, let’s turn to a brief outline of the 1959 edition of The Power of
Nonviolence.
In the Preface he states that his objective is to explain the power of nonviolent resistance
to solve conflicts and to show its applicability in the West today; in an age of the H bomb, total
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war and the rapid exploitation of the earth’s resources. He says that the term ‘nonviolent resistance’
seems ‘self-contradictory’ to most Westerners accustomed to power politics. Moreover, Gandhi’s
explanations of nonviolence have not been very effective in the West because they come from a
very different culture. His task is thus to make nonviolence understandable to a Western audience
and to show that it is ‘application in any country, at any time, under any circumstances and for any
cause’. He states:
For in reality this matter of handling conflict constructively is of immediate concern to
everyone who has ever been angry or afraid, resentful, revengeful or bitter; who has ever
taken part in a fight, mob violence or war; or who has been the object of anger, hatred,
exploitation or oppression. It touches all those who are troubled lest the vast economic,
political and social questions that are pressing upon all nations will issue in still more
appalling violence and increased insecurity for everyone, or even destruction of the human
race. It is also important to those who hope that somehow the ideals of mankind can be made
practical and harmonized with its conduct.
Military power thrives on partial and antagonistic unities based in ‘fear, pride, anger, hate and
lies.’ The power of nonviolence is a greater power because it is based on ‘the unity of the human
species’ animated by ‘love and the desire for justice’. It can overcome ‘all differences of race,
nationality, ideology or culture’.
Accordingly, the book not only shows how nonviolence works and grows, but also how it
connects humans with this underlying power that sustains all life.
The book begins with examples of nonviolence from the early 20th century to Montgomery.
These examples show that nonviolence is not a theory, but a practice (experiments in truth) – and
it works. The next three chapters are his famous detailed analysis of the interaction between violent
and non-violent actors, so we see how nonviolence works to transform the violent adversary into
a partner in nonviolent dispute resolution and cooperation. The next two chapters show how the
analysis of individual actors in the first three chapters can be used to explain how large-scale
nonviolent movements can transform violent actors and violent social systems into nonviolent
social systems (chapters 5-6).
He then argues that the analysis so far provides a definitive answer to the challenges posed
by William James and Walter Lippmann (in Chapter 7).
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In the next chapter on nonviolence and the state Gregg argues that states and diplomacy
cannot bring peace, justice and freedom to the world, based as they are on violence and domination.
Only building citizen-based, grass-roots global networks of nonviolent communities and
nonviolent resistance can do this. In so doing, citizens can also modify and change the structure of
states by nonviolent means in the long run. Chapter 9 on Persuasion sets out his basic view that
the power of nonviolence unifies, animates and sustains all forms of life by means of ‘persuasion’
rather than ‘force’. He explains this in terms of stimulus-response psychology and Gestalt
psychology and early systems theory. It is employed to show how large-scale transformative social
change from a violent to a nonviolent civilization can be brought about by the cumulative effects
of small steps creating a critical mass and tipping points. He suggests that this transformative
power of persuasion in human lifeways is analogous to growth and transformation in ecological
earthways. This whole line of argument is developed more fully in his most philosophical book,
Compass for Civilization, 1956.
In the last two chapters he argues that for this great transformation to happen, training
grounded in democratic communities of nonviolent practice and lifeways are absolutely necessary.
That is, these chapters re-introduce the practical and moral foundations of nonviolence that he first
experienced in living with Gandhi in India.
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5. The Power of Nonviolence and Moral Jiu-Jitsu
Bearing this overview in mind, I would like to conclude with a brief synopsis of the most famous
section of The Power of Nonviolence. This is the chapters in which he analyzes the complex
dialogical interaction between nonviolent and violent actors. His objective is to show how
nonviolent actors are able to move violent actors around to see and experience the superiority of
nonviolent conflict resolution; to engage with it and be transformed into it; and so to step into a
nonviolent way of life and be animated by the spiritual power of nonviolence. He describes this
complex interaction in chapters 2-5 and calls it ‘moral jiu-jitsu’. He describes it further dimensions
of it in chapters 7 and 9, but I will focus on chapters 2-5.
Gregg says that his aim in chapters 2-5 is to show the sceptics ‘how nonviolent resistance
works’. (PNV 43). There are three dimensions of nonviolent resistance he hopes to clarify. The
first is to show nonviolent resistance as a dramatic manifestation of the spiritual power of
nonviolence in general, so it displays many of the main aspects of this mode of power, which is,
as we have seen, the greatest power on earth – the power of life itself. Second, the chapters
explicate the way of nonviolence in contestation with violent power; how it is different from, and
superior to violent power – and thus can replace war and violence. Third, given the constitutive
relation between means and ends, nonviolence is the only way to a peaceful world.
5.1 Gandhi’s Satyagraha
‘The power of nonviolent resistance’ is Gregg’s translation of Gandhi’s ‘Satyagraha’ or ‘soul-
power’. It has four main features according to Gandhi. First, the exercise of Satyagraha is the
manifestation of truthfulness (satya means truth). That is, the practitioner always acts truthfully
and openly. But ‘sat’ also means ‘being’, and so the practitioner is trying always to act in
accordance with the truth of our being: namely; the ground of our being in living relationships of
reciprocal love.
The second dimension of soul-power is ahimsa (nonviolence). Ahimsa means
‘nonviolence’ in both the negative sense of non-harm to all forms of life and the positive sense of
active compassion towards all forms of life.
Third, soul-power also involves ‘self-sacrifice’: that is, to have the courage to confront
injustice and violence with truthfulness, nonviolence and love, even if it means our suffering and
death at the hands of a violent adversary. Hence, nonviolent resistance is the instrument of the
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strong and courageous, not the weak and cowardly, for it takes more courage to act against injustice
without harming others than to kill others. If you do not have the courage to act nonviolently
against injustice and violence, Gandhi and Gregg argue, then you should resist with violence, as a
soldier does, which requires a weaker from of courage than nonviolence, but is still more
courageous than the cowardliness of doing nothing.
Fourth, nonviolent resistance is always a practical and imperfect ‘experiment in truth’ – in
exercising nonviolence, learning from each experiment how it works, and improving the art of
nonviolence for the next exercise; and thus gradually building up a knowledge of the arts and
sciences of nonviolence for future generations.
The reason why the nonviolent actor comports him or herself in this way with respect to a
violent and unjust adversary is that we must always treat another human being with respect and
dignity, and not as a thing to be manipulated by force or fraud. As Martin Luther King Jr puts it in
his Foreword to The Power of Nonviolence: ‘I hope it [The Power of Nonviolence] gets a wide
readership, particularly among those, in this country and throughout the world, who are seeking
ways of achieving full social, personal and political freedom in a manner consistent with human
dignity’. Moreover, this nonviolent way of recognising and respecting the dignity of the other is
also acting in accordance with and sustain the spiritual unity of all human beings (our
‘interdependent’ or ‘higher’ self, as Gregg puts it).
5.2 Gregg’s nonviolent jiu-jitsu
Gregg is in complete agreement with Gandhi on these constitutive qualities of the ethos of
the nonviolent actor. As he writes: (PNV 49)
[The nonviolent actor] must have primarily that disposition best known as love – an interest
in people so deep, and determined, and lasting as to be creative; a profound knowledge of or
faith in the ultimate possibilities of human nature; a courage based upon a conscious or
subconscious realization of the underlying unity of all life and eternal values or eternal life
of the human spirit; a strong and deep desire for an love of truth; and a humility that is not
cringing or self-deprecatory or timid but is rather a truer sense of proportion in regard to
people, things, qualities, and ultimate values. These human traits of love, faith, courage,
honesty and humility exist in greater or less strength in every person. By self-training and
discipline they can be developed sufficiently to make a good NV soldier out of any human
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being….Love is the most important of all these qualities of nonviolent person; it may even
be considered the origin of all the others.
However, Gregg extends the focus to the complex intersubjective interaction between the
nonviolent actor and the violent opponent. When the nonviolent actor confronts a violent opponent
with a nonviolent, way of relating to each other and resolving disputes, this alternative way of
being begins to influence the violent actor, both consciously and subconsciously. It sets into
motion the complex set of processes and interactions that Gregg calls suggestion, persuasion,
conversion and integration. Gregg’s genius was to disclose and compare this complex phenomenon
with the game and arts of jiu-jitsu.
Gregg distinguishes between ‘physical’ jiu-jitsu and ‘moral’ or ‘ethical’ nonviolent jiu-
jitsu. The central feature of nonviolent ‘physical’ jiu-jitsu is that the nonviolent jiu-jitsu master
neither flees nor fights the violent opponent directly, but, rather, maneuvers in such ways that the
violent attacker’s own actions work against him; constantly causing him to lose his poise, balance,
self-confidence and energy. The violent adversary comes to realize that he cannot win this contest
in the conventional way: that is, by victory over a symmetrically violent opponent, as in the
standard military model. In the 1935 edition Gregg cites the manual on physical jiu-jitsu from
which he learned this:
‘Don’t resist when your opponent pushes you; rather increase your pace in that direction and
pull him a little at the same time. Don’t let him ever get the strain on you but go with him, if
anything a little faster than his pull would cause you to. By following this precept you
are…almost catching your balance before he wishes you to lose it, while he is losing his and
is without the aid of your resistance – on which he has been more or less depending to help
him regain his balance. Thus in an easy and simply manner you neutralize his efforts to get
you off your balance, and at the same time create a favorable opportunity of effecting a
throw, by keeping him off his’ (PNV 1935 254)
Gregg argues that nonviolent actors interact with violent opponents in similar ‘physical’
ways in their short and long term tactics and strategies, and with their repertoire of techniques,
such as protests, marches, boycotts, strikes, sit-ins, and noncooperation. He discusses these
maneuvers in chapter 2 and more fully in the chapter on strategy. He notes that this way of coping
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with difficult situations in everyday life is quite common: neither flight nor fight, but coping (PNV
57).
However, he is primarily concerned with the psychological, mental, emotional and
especially moral processes that are involved in all the activities of nonviolent physical jiu-jitsu.
He calls these processes moral jiu-jitsu. This is what he is famous for in the history of nonviolence.
His main point is, citing William James, that since the actions of nonviolent physical jiu-jitsu are
infused with psychological, mental, emotional and moral processes, we can understand how
nonviolent resistance can work effectively only if we understand these processes. He points out
that all the great military strategists also have been concerned with winning the ‘hearts and minds’
of their opponents and have seen this ‘moral’ contest as more important than the physical contest.
The analogy with jiu-jitsu shows how misleading it is to call nonviolent action ‘resistance’.
It is the whole complex arts and game of reciprocal interaction between nonviolent and violent
actors that goes through a number of stages to the creative transformation of the antagonistic
relationship between them into a nonviolent relationship of mutual respect in which they resolve
their differences and go on to cooperate together. I cannot do justice to Gregg’s analysis here. I
will just mention the main steps.
5.3 Moral jiu-jitsu
The violent actor acts on the assumption that the nonviolent actor will respond with fear or
anger and thus respond with flight or fight. He (or she) expects this kind of interaction and knows
it well through his training and experience. But, this is not what happens. Instead, the nonviolent
opponent is fearless, calm, and steady because of training, belief and experience. She or he exhibits
self-control and does not respond with counter-violence. Moreover, she accepts blows with a good
temper, states her desire to find out the truth of the dispute and to examine both sides, and to abide
by the outcome.
Moreover, he or she proves her sincerity by accepting suffering rather than inflicting it on others,
with no fear or resentment. Rather than fear, anger and retaliation, he or she manifests great
courage that the violent attacker has not seen before.
The cumulative effects of this interaction on the violent actor is a kind of moral jiu-jitsu
analogous to physical jiu-jitsu. The violent attacker loses his moral balance. ‘He suddenly and
unexpectedly loses the moral support which the usual violent or resentful resistance of most
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victims would render him. In Gregg’s nice wording, he plunges forward, as it were, into a new
world of values.’ (P {NV 44) The attacker is surprised, feels insecure and unsure how to proceed,
whereas the nonviolent actor retains poise and balance.
As the interactions continue, the violent actor begins to lose his assurance in the moral
worth of his own mode of comportment in contrast with the nonviolent alternative in front of him,
and relative to the gaze and reactions of onlookers. He begins to entertain the idea that he might
be confronted with a way of life that is higher than mere physical force; that the power of
nonviolence may be a higher realization of human nature – ‘perhaps the manifestation of some
ultimate powers in the background of life itself. (PNV 46) The refusal of the nonviolent actor to
use violence against her opponent shows her trust and respect for the personality and moral
integrity of the violent opponent, and these qualities of trust and respect have a powerful effect on
the opponent.
These factors and more, Gregg argues, create in the very personality of the opponent a
‘strong new impulse that is incompatible with his previous tendency’. This new suggestion does
not conflict with his previous tendency, but diverts and absorbs its energy so that it is even more
powerful. Persuasion and conversion are brought about nonviolently by creating this kind counter
tendency within the thought, imagination and emotional make-up of the adversary. ‘This is ‘the
wisest psychological dynamic and moral strategy’. This internal counter-tendency is the intimation
of the self-sustaining or autopoietic power of life itself, in dramatic contrast to the life-destroying
power of violence (PNV 52)
Gregg states that this transformative kind of moral jiu-jitsu is only possible due to the moral
character and conduct of the nonviolent practitioner. ‘The art of jiu-jitsu’, is based on a knowledge
of balance and how to disturb it. In a struggle of moral jiu-jitsu, the retention of moral equilibrium
seems to depend upon the qualities of one’s relationship to moral truth. Hence, part of the superior
power of the nonviolent resister seems to lie in the nature of his character or ethos, as we have
seen above (PNV 49)
Once the violent opponent realises that the nonviolent actor does not wish to humiliate,
crush or conquer, but to work out their dispute in a relationship of mutual respect, the violent
opponent sees that there is a way to re-establish his equilibrium at a higher level of existence
without losing face. (PNV 58). This introduces the phase of nonviolent negotiation and conflict
resolution that Gregg calls ‘integration’. He takes this term from Mary Follett. This is not the
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voluntary submission of one side, the struggle and victory of one side over another, or a
compromise. It is a fourth way to solve conflict. It consists in trying to work out together a creative
solution, or series of successive solutions that takes into account the suffering and well-being of
all affected and tries to finds ways to satisfy them. There has been an enormous amount of work
on nonviolent contestation, negotiation, resolution and cooperation since 1959. However, I think
that there are three features of Gregg’s analysis that remain relevant.
The first is his view that the transformation of the contest between nonviolent and violent
actors into nonviolent negotiation is what he calls a ‘sublimation’, ‘reconciliation’ and ‘inclusive
syntheses of the energy of both parties. In violent versus nonviolent struggles the partners use their
energy in opposition to each other. Not as much energy is wasted as in violent struggles, but it is
still immensely wasteful, enervating and exhausting, especially for the violent partner. In contrast,
what happens in the transformation to nonviolent negotiations is the realisation that they can
combine their energy by working and acting together: that is, the emergence of ‘spontaneous
cooperation’. Gregg puts it this way in this chapter on ‘utilizing emotional energy’ PNV 63):
Love [nonviolence] means using in the moral sphere the principle of the resolution of forces,
known to every schoolboy who has studied physics, instead of the wasteful principle of direct
opposition and consequent waste of energy, which produces unsatisfactory and only
temporary results. Love does something better than conquer, for conquest implies
destruction, submission and suppression. Love is more intelligent and tries not to allow any
energy to go to waste.
Today, I imagine that we would call the transformation to negotiating-together in this way the
‘emergent property’ of self-organisation (autopoiesis).
The second point he makes is that this kind of negotiation or integration requires love in
the sense of empathy and compassion of each participant in dialogue-with each other if they are to
really understand the suffering of each and work out the appropriate ways to well-being in mutual
response. It cannot be a pre-packaged model of transitional justice from dictatorship to
representative democracy, for this is just the exercise of domination (power-over) of the more
powerful partners in a new form.3
3 See the work of Anthon Simon Laden, especially Reasoning: A social Picture, OUP, 2012, and the discussions we have in On Global Citizenship and Freedom and Democracy in an Imperial Context. I have tried to synthesize this work in Trust, Mistrust and Distrust in Diverse Societies (forthcoming).
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Gregg’s final point is that this form of negotiation is itself the manifestation of a nonviolent
way of life – of ongoing nonviolent contestation and cooperation. In engaging in it, the participants
are beginning to bring into being a nonviolent way of life together and be animated by the power
that animates and sustains life on earth. And, as he argues in the chapter on Persuasion, and as he
learned in Gandhi’s ashram, this is how the power of nonviolence grows – step by step.
6. Conclusion
I there is time, I would like to read a quotation from the chapter on training that summarises
Gregg’s whole outlook as I understand it. It is entitled ‘digging deeper’. He begins by say that ‘we
must, in order to prevent war, democratically and without violence, change that society from its
very foundations and throughout its entire structure and motivation’. He then goes on to describe
what this means:
It is a means of building up a conscious purpose and practice of mutuality and friendly
cooperation. It is a method of increasing social integration, of enlarging the opportunities
for effectively taking part in the total life of the community. It is a way of developing the
sentiments, motives and mutual trust and moral power needed to carry us without violence
through the vast changes that are coming so swiftly, a way to make a beginning of effective,
remedial economic action, to bring about wise changes, and to support the new forms of
society and assure that they will be better than what we now have. We must build a much
stronger moral foundation for society than we now have.
To end war and violence means have a better world, but that is impossible unless the people
in it grow better. Those who are endeavoring to abolish war, therefore, must themselves
strive hard to become better people by living better lives. Even if one says that it is the evil
framework of society that must be changed before the mass of people can become better,
it remains true, that, in order to gain sufficient influence, trust and power to win a big
following and cause the change, the leaders who aspire to alter that bad system must
themselves become better men and women than they were before.
We have more control over our own character than we have over the external forms of
society. So we must begin with ourselves, knowing that to the extent that we can win self-
control and strength in the qualities needed for this struggle, we will begin to be able to